The Leather Jacket and the Laptop: My Unexpected Coffee with Jensen Huang



You know those moments where you question if you’re actually awake? The ones where reality seems to glitch in the best way possible? Well, I had one of those yesterday.
I was sitting in a corner booth at a crowded café, staring at my laptop screen. My code was broken, my coffee was cold, and my motivation was running on fumes. I was trying to build something new, something impactful, but I felt stuck in the weeds of technical debt.
Then, the door chimed. The room didn't go silent, but the energy shifted.
In walked a man wearing black jeans and—despite the mild weather—a signature black leather jacket. He looked around for a seat, holding a tray with a simple iced tea.
It was Jensen Huang.

The Encounter
My heart hammered against my ribs. Do I say something? Do I let him be? The CEO of NVIDIA, the man powering the AI revolution, was looking for a table, and the only empty chair was... directly across from me.

He caught my eye, gestured to the empty seat, and smiled. "Is this taken?"
"No," I managed to squeak out, closing my IDE slightly. "Please."
He sat down, not with the air of a trillion-dollar CEO, but like an engineer taking a break. He noticed the code on my screen.
"Python?" he asked, taking a sip of his drink. "Building something cool, or just fixing bugs?"
"Trying to build the future," I joked, regaining my composure. "Currently, just fixing bugs."

The Lesson
We ended up talking for ten minutes. I expected him to talk about H100 chips, stock prices, or the metaverse. But he didn't. He asked me about my problem.
When I explained the roadblock I was hitting with my project, he didn't offer a technical solution. Instead, he leaned in, his expression intense and thoughtful.
"Don't worry about the speed of the code yet," he said. "Worry about the speed of the idea. Are you solving the right problem? Because if you solve the wrong problem very efficiently, it’s still the wrong answer."

It was a classic "first principles" moment. I realized I had been obsessing over optimization before I had even nailed the core utility of what I was building.

The Takeaway
He finished his tea quickly—he’s a busy man, after all. As he stood up to leave, he tapped the table near my laptop.
"Keep pushing," he said with a grin. "The more you struggle with it, the more you learn. Pain and suffering are good for character."
He walked out as quickly as he arrived, leaving me with a cold coffee and a completely new perspective.

Meeting Jensen Huang wasn't just about seeing a celebrity. It was a reminder that behind the massive keynotes and the leather jacket is an engineer at heart who loves the grind just as much as we do.
I opened my laptop back up. I deleted the block of code I’d been agonizing over for three hours.
I started over. And this time, I knew exactly what I was building.

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